Why I buy

There are two reasons I buy comic books.

One is because I want to see what happens because, well, I want to see what happens. I'm directly interested in a particular storyline. This category includes pretty much all of the ongoings I get.

The other is because I want to see how what happens affects other titles I follow more actively. This category includes crossover titles (for example, buying Thunderbolts because there's a shared storyline between that book and Deadpool), guest appearances (for example, picking up an issue of Wolverine because the Winter Soldier was in it), and more event titles than ought to be the case. There's a relatively short attention span associated with this category. I started getting Trinity for this reason but when it didn't become something I bought on its own merits, I dropped it.

Now what you probably want, if you're a comic book company, is to get me to buy a category-2 comic (that I only buy as long as it references something else) and convince me that it's a category-1 comic (that I'll buy on its own merits). In the old days this was how I added quite a few books--I only ever started reading Captain America and Iron Man because I enjoyed them in Avengers. These days it's not so common, although Dark Avengers is working on attaining that status.

My wallet, of course, is happier when this does not happen.